Topic: Freaking out--HELP!

[Larissa]

Sorry, guys. It looks like it's gone for good.  I emailed it to a few techie people (including xC0000005 who very nicely tried to deconstruct the file), but no one has been able to get anything but the first 15 pages or so (which show up in WordPad).  It seems like something happened during my last save that stopped the save.

Anyway, I REALLY appreciate everyone's help and concern.  It is just as horrifying as you can imagine.  So I will now turn into a neurotic about saving in three places, and emailing it to myself both in file and in the body of the email, and anything else I can think of.

At least it was only those three thousand words (THREE THOUSAND WORDS!!!! *sobs*) and I still have the other 80-some pages.  It could have been worse. (I just have to keep telling myself that...)

[TracyH]

So sorry, Larissa. I know how stressful it is to lose all those words. I once lost nearly 50 pages. I had an earlier version saved, but it was maybe from two drafts before and was radically different - not sure how many pages of new work was lost out of those 50. I was sick for days. The good news is - the re-writing made it even better than it had been. Never underestimate your ability to re-write - especially when the material is fresh in your mind. You might be surprised what you come up with. You can do it!

[RuthD]

How horrible, Larissa--so sorry that happened to you! Hope you can reconstruct without too much trouble.I just signed up for dropbox, which I hope will encourage me to back things up more consistently.

[Anissa]

I'm so sorry to hear that, Larissa. I've had to rewrite lost words in the past, and at first the task is daunting. But I found that instead of trying to write the exact same words, if I instead focused on recapturing the scene and how I wanted it to feel, it often came out better.

It's actually what inspired me later to rewrite a novel from scratch, which was a huge learning experience for me.

I wish you all the best in the rewrite.
 

[Jeff Carney]

Yeah, sorry, LaHa. At least there's closure in giving up and moving on. I'm sure you'll do good.

[xC0000005]

So sorry.  My best guess is some sort of disk truncation.  The "good" element ended at an offset that was way too neat to be coincidence (exactly 64k), and it wasn't just that the CRC for the block didn't match up - the rest of the data was just gone. 

I love computers when they work for us.  I hate them when they work against us.  I wish you luck in rewriting.

[JennaWren]

Gah. Just 

[Tabitha]

 
Oh, I'm so sorry.

There is one other thing you can do, and that's configure Word to automatically create a backup file. If you go to the File tab, then click on Options, then Advanced, a window will pop up with various options. Scroll down to the bottom, and you'll see a section titled Save. Check the box labeled "Always create backup copy." Maybe this will help prevent losing everything in the future.

 
I hope you're able to recreate what you wrote, even if it takes a few drafts to get there.